Kingdome Hearts is one of those game series that can intrigue you by the concept alone. The idea of adventuring around recognizable Disney locations and movies is appealing to a lot of people, whether it be out of nostalgia, the fact that you still fall into Disney’s target audience, or you’re just a fan of adventuring through different worlds in your video games. It also doesn’t hurt that SquareEnix, known for the epic Final Fantasy series, is the one making these games, and you know they’re going to put a bit of their style into the mix. I was able to find out just how good a job they did when I played Kingdom Hearts 358/2 Days for the Nintendo DS.
Going in, I thought that I might have a hard time following the story, since the only other Kingdom Hearts game I played was Chain of Memories for the Game Boy Advanced, and the series looks like it’s heavily based on a continuing story. But I was happy to find that, despite there being a lot of elements of the plot based on other games (especially Chain of Memories in this case), that the story was still really easy to follow and can work on its own.
The game begins as a flash back to day 7 (though it’s quickly forgotten it’s a flashback), where Roxas (the character you play as) has his first memory. We learn he’s part of the Organization XIII that has the goal to release all the hearts into the sky and create Kingdom Hearts. This is done by you and the other members, who are all beings known as “Heartless” because they have no “Heart” in the figurative sense and believe Kingdom Hearts will give them one. After you learn all the basics from the game, things start getting a little mysterious; who is the new member Xion? Why do some people act so weird around her? Why is Roxas so important? Who is this person he keeps seeing in his head? I will admit that it can become hard to follow and the voice acting can be hilariously bad at some points, but it should still grip you in enough to want to play through just to figure it all out. Even if it’s not your thing, it doesn’t get in the way of the rest of the game play.
(See how bad that was?)
The setting of the Disney locations is used just as that; settings. I’m not sure if it’s like this in the other Kingdom Heart games, but the feeling of being in “Ahgrabah” (the first Disney world you visit) felt pretty superficial. You don’t follow the movie’s plot when you’re in there, you fight original in game enemies and you can’t interact with the main characters since you’re doing a secret mission. You do, on occasion meet with the “sidekick” characters, such as the Genie, Tinkerbell or Phil from Hercules, just because it wouldn’t affect anything, but I think it’s too little. They don’t even have any music from the movies, save for “This is Halloween”, which would have been an easy way to get that feeling. What I’m getting at is that if you were going to get this game based solely on reliving Disney movies, I’d look into that twice.
The gameplay was what really surprised me though. I’ll admit I wasn’t expecting much, since I though the game was going to be heavily story based, and was going to get was a standard turn-based RPG system, much like Chrono Cross or the 2D Final Fantasies I’ve played. What I got was a fantastic mix between beat-em-up platforming and RPG. Instead of slowly waiting your turn, you’ll be frantically pressing buttons to attack. At the end of each mission though, you still get experience points, but the system of “Leveling up” and becoming stronger is once again something original. See, you’re given these “panels”, which you can unlock, find and buy more of as you go along. As long as you have the space to put in desired power-ups in the panels, you can put them in and become stronger and change your characters magic, attack pattern, items held and other skills. One of these panels is indeed the Level Up, which boosts up all of your stats. My only problem with the gameplay is that often so chaotix that having to go through menus for magic and items will probably kill you, so make good use of the 4 shortcut buttons you got.
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